Gene DeitchControversial animator dies at 95
In 1959, Deitch, who had done some work for the UPA and Terrytoons studios in the late 1950s, defected to Communist Czechoslovakia after a filmmaker promised to fund his polemic (yet Oscar-winning) film
Munro (in which the military drafts a four-year-old). Over the next five years, Deitch's Prague studio contracted with the American studios that were cutting back to limited animation styles as television was gaining supremacy over cinema. He produced
Popeye shorts, a revival of
Krazy Kat, and most polarizingly,
Tom and Jerry—this despite his despising Tom and Jerry's creators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Deitch's absurdly violent
Tom and Jerry shorts, lacking the animation style and subtlety of the Hanna-Barbera shorts, were considered among the worst of the series, and in 1963, MGM ended its relationship with Deitch and hired Chuck Jones to continue the series instead.
In the 1970s, Deitch was in contact with E.B. White trying to arrange a film adaptation of
Charlotte's Web. The project fell through and his nemeses, Hanna and Barbera, ended up making the film instead; Deitch went to his grave insisting his film would have been better. He spent most of the rest of his career with Weston Woods Studios, which produced educational films.
Deitch died April 16 from intestinal problems.
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